𝐈'𝐦 𝐚𝐧 𝐄𝐱𝐭𝐫𝐚 𝐢𝐧 𝐚 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐝𝐲 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥 (𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐋𝐄𝐓𝐄𝐃)

Chapter 51: Roses and Ruses

The world was soft around the edges.

I stood barefoot on marble that felt too warm, in a garden that didn't exist in my palace. Roses without thorns bloomed in colors I had never seen before. The sky was dusk, but no stars came out.

Then I saw her.

A beautiful child, maybe seven or eight, standing by the fountain. Long silver hair that fell past her waist, red eyes that glowed faintly even in the dim light. A smaller, perfect copy of Phoebe.

Electra.

My jaw tightened. I expected this somehow—I knew she would find me one day, though it was a bit sooner than I would prefer—if ever.

I had never liked this child, even in my first life. Electra looked too much like the woman who started it all. The woman who took Arsen's attention, the beginning of my misery, the reason I died thinking I was abandoned.

"You," I said. It wasn't a greeting.

Electra tilted her head. She didn't look afraid. She looked calculating, with eyes too mature, and an expression that didn't suit a child.

Probably because she wasn't actually a child, if I remember the book correctly, she was already an adult when she turned back time. It was just her preference to show up in her child form.

What a manipulative bitch.

I wondered if the absence of her parents was what made her so twisted. After all, didn't I know that feeling all too well?

Though unlike her, I knew what disappointed my mother, what enraged my father. The jigsaw puzzle I was because of them, the parts of them that fitted me, the sharp edges of it, the fading colors. But Electra... she never even met them. I doubted she knew anything about her parents besides a few pieces she heard from some people who knew them.

"It's hard," she said, pulling me off my thoughts. Her voice was soft, but old beyond her years. "To come here. It took me a long time to find you."

I crossed my arms. "This is my dream."

"I know." Electra stepped closer, her bare feet making no sound. "I don't have a body, Empress Calypso. No flesh to tie me here. My connection to the living world is very weak. Even visiting Leon is hard now. I haven't managed it in months."

I didn't answer. I guess brainwashing Leon and making him think less of Electra played a part in that.

"But now," Electra continued, "Mother is pregnant again. With me. So I'm strong enough to come. For a little while." She smiled, and for a second she looked exactly like the girl in the novel's cover. "I came because I wanted to ask you something."

My stomach twisted. "Ask."

"Why did you try to sabotage Mother and Father?" Electra's red eyes were serious. "You should let them be together. They should be a family. We would be happy. I saw it in my vision."

I blinked. "Mother and father? Who?"

"Phoebe and Arsen, of course," Electra said, as if it were obvious. Like the world had never been anything else. "They love each other. They're supposed to be together. You're in the way."

A sound escaped my throat. It started low, then built.

I began to laugh.

It was an unsuppressed laughter. It was wild, broken—echoing across the impossible garden. I bent double, clutching my sides, laughing as the walls of the dream might crack.

Electra took a step back, confused and frightened. "Why are you laughing?"

I wiped my eyes and straightened. My smile was not kind.